Newsletter | November 14, 2013

11.14.13 -- Are The Products You Sell And Use The Best?

In 2013, Business Solutions brought you a variety of product reviews written to help you evaluate new products and accelerate moving into new technologies and business models. These reviews have received a lot of praise for their depth and objectivity. Because you're busy, I wanted to ensure you had a chance to check out the reviews from this year. Rest assured, we have more reviews planned for 2014.

Mike Monocello
Editor-in-Chief
Business Solutions magazine

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Scaling Managed Services With A Third-Party NOC Partnership
Third-party NOC services are the means by which managed services providers (MSPs) can deliver a foundation of services to their customers at fixed, known, and predictable costs; gain access to new technologies and support resources; and grow business without tremendous capital investment. Through third-party network operation center (NOC) partnerships, MSPs achieve an accelerated time to value, lower development costs, access to extensive research and operational experience, access to scalable infrastructure and expert resources, and faster returns on investment. Learn more.

Mobility in the worlds of retail and hospitality is one of the hottest topics. There’s also a lot of hype, confusion, and speculation. In an attempt to provide clarity on just one aspect of a mobile POS solution, we decided to review 2-inch mobile receipt printers.

There’s a class of high-definition IP cameras that can provide higher resolution/better picture quality than analog cameras, can be deployed in a way that one camera replaces four to six (or even more) old cameras, and gives merchants access to powerful analytics not only to prevent loss but also to help with marketing. I’m talking about 360-degree hemispheric/fisheye cameras.

When it comes to retail, restaurant, and grocery IT, no system is as crucial as the point of sale. While margins have eroded over the years, and there’s been outside pressure from tablets and similar mobile technologies, the time-tested POS continues to stand as the primary customer payment and interaction device.

There are a lot of services an MSP can sell its customers, but almost every MSP includes BDR services as one of its core offerings. For this review, we tested seven BDR solutions over a two-week period.

If you’re an IT solutions provider that’s considering selling managed services, it won’t be long before you’re ready to trade in your Excel tracking and ticketing system for something more robust. Many of the PSA offerings on the market today include modules for project management, resource management, CRM (customer relationship management), and knowledge management. Most MSPs will agree that the time and project management savings from a PSA alone are worth several times the cost of the software.

A common printer in field service applications, the rugged 4-inch mobile label printer was a class of printers we were eager to test for VAR and ISV (independent software vendors) readers.

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Industry Event

The Mobile Payments Conference has co-located their event, for the first time with ITEXPO, one of the nation’s largest technology-oriented conferences in Miami, Florida, January 28 to 31, 2014. ITEXPO expects to draw 7,000 attendees from a variety of sectors, including enterprises, service providers, government, resellers, manufacturers and developers. The 2014 Mobile Payments Conference will highlight the new mobile commerce solutions that continue to enter the market.